DigiBird digitizes paper maps

[suchona.kani.z]

There is also a certain habit factor in bird monitoring. The MhB officially started in 2004 as a successor program to the monitoring of common bird species that has been carried out since 1989. Volunteers who have been mapping on paper for 20 or even 30 years do not necessarily see the need for digitization. In frost or unexpected drizzle, a pencil and clipboard can withstand more than fingers and a telephone. And anyone who has experienced the power consumption of GPS for the first time will gratefully return to the analog method as soon as the battery runs out in the field.

The new web application DigiBird has been available since last year. This allows daily maps on paper to be subsequently digitized. To do this, they are first scanned and assigned to the mapper's ornitho account. The header data and points can then be entered in a web editor. The editor is similar to the NaturaList data entry dialog; with a little intuition, the same data quality can be achieved.

You log in to DigiBird using single sign-on via Ornitho, so it's no problem peru consumer email list to automatically synchronize all data points in the background. If you've mapped digitally, you can see your finished maps in DigiBird. If you've scanned paper maps, you can see the scans and the maps that you've subsequently digitized yourself.

The best feature is the inconspicuous “Species Maps” button: The maps separated by bird species and colored by month, which last year had to be edited in QGIS or Office, are displayed ready in OpenStreetMap. If the territories are not obvious - in the following image, 54 blackbirds have to be unraveled - you can zoom in and import the visible section into any graphics program.


Third partial automation in 2023
Why do the territories have to be counted by hand? All necessary information is available in machine-readable form:

the digital species cards
the table of territory sizes for each species
the table of core breeding times for each species
The AutoTerri function is expected to make the last homework assignment in DigiBird superfluous from 2023.

AutoTerri draws boundaries
AutoTerri is an algorithm developed by the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach. It first calculates the geographical distance between all observation points on the species map. The points that are close to each other are then examined for details such as behavior and gender. Matching points that could belong to the same territory are grouped.

A territory distance is then calculated from the geographical location of the groups and the known territory requirements of the species in the respective landscape area. For bird species with pronounced territorial behavior, reliable territory boundaries can be calculated in this way. Caution is advised with colony breeders, such as a sparrow hedge or waterfowl that share a lake.

Then all the volunteers have to do is what they love to do anyway: walk around the area and map the birds using the NaturaList app. Once all four lists have been sent to Ornitho, processing takes place automatically.

The data points collected by the user will of course continue to be displayed in Ornitho and DigiBird. An evaluation is no longer necessary, but is still desired. Every area where a birdwatcher comes to a different result than AutoTerri is important for fine-tuning the algorithm. Ideally, comparisons between AutoTerri and human assessments should be calculated over several years. Time will tell how many volunteers are still willing to take on the work of a computer.